s; others, like
the Meuse, were flanked by large dykes, like those raised to force
back the sea; others were turned from their channels. The wandering
waters were gathered together, the course of the rivers was regulated,
the streams were divided with rigorous precision, and sent in
different directions to maintain the equilibrium of the enormous
liquid mass,--for the smallest deviation might cause the submersion of
whole provinces. In this manner all of the rivers, which originally
wandered unrestrained, swamping and devastating the whole country,
have been reduced to streams and have become the servants of man.

But the fiercest struggle of all was the battle with the ocean.
Holland, as a whole, lies lower than the sea-level; consequently,
wherever the coast is not defended by downs it had to be protected by
embankments. If these huge bulwarks of earth, wood, and granite were
not standing like monuments to witness to the courage and perseverance
of the Dutch, it would be impossible to believe that the hand of man,
even in the course of many centuries, could have completed such an
immense work. In Zealand alone the dykes extend over an area of four
hundred kilometers. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is
protected by a dyke, the cost of whose construction and preservation
put out at interest would, it is calculated, have amounted to a sum
great enough to have paid for the building of the dyke of solid
copper. Round the town of Helder, at the northern extremity of
Northern Holland, there is a dyke made of blocks of Norwegian granite
which is ten kilometers long and stretches sixty meters into the sea.
The province of Friesland, which is eighty-eight kilometers long, is
protected by three rows of enormous palisades sustained by blocks of
Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the towns on the coast of
the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands which have been formed by
fragments of the land that has disappeared, forming a sort of circle
between Friesland and Northern Holland, are protected by dykes. From
the mouths of the Ems to the mouths of the Scheldt, Holland is an
impenetrable fort, in whose immense bastions the mills are the towers,
the locks the gates, the islands the advanced forts; of which, like a
real fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tips of its
steeples and the roofs of its buildings, as though in derision or in
challenge.

In truth, Holland is a fortress, and the Dutch live as t